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When Paul urges us in Colossians 3 to “let the Word of Christ dwell richly in our hearts,” he goes on to say that we’re to do that as we “make melody to the Lord in [y]our hearts” and as we sing and instruct each other in our praises. Now maybe it’s right that our noses should be in our hymnbooks when we’re singing; but it’s spiritually right that we should also have an eye to our brothers and sisters and be praying, “O Lord, sanctify these words I’m singing, in order that my brothers and sisters may be so instructed in their truth, as their lives to be comforted and transformed and centered again on Your glory, and blessed again in genuine fellowship that we enjoy with one another.”

And all of this because the Lord Jesus gathers us as God’s family, and then leads us in the singing of God’s praises.

Now most of us are at one end of the spectrum or the other. And I suppose our native desire would be for a Christian life in which our emotions were on an absolutely even keel; and one day they will be. But that will be an even keel of prolonged ecstasy, that we will be able to cope with in resurrection bodies that were made for prolonged ecstasy! And until that happens, one of the things that God does to us in worship—and it seems to me so marvelously gracious that He has given us songs to sing that do this in worship—is to take those of us who have layers of emotion that need to be unpacked and unstarched, and He begins to set them free; and those of whose emotions at the other end of the spectrum are out of control, and He takes them and brings them into a certain kind of order and discipline by the very things we sing.

The pattern for song in the pages of Scripture [especially in the Psalms] is perfectly suited and balanced to the reality for our humanity. And so we’re encouraged in this different way to sing that which varies in theme, that which differs in mood, that which is different in style, that which is singular, that which is repetitive, that which is long, that which is short. Because in all of these areas, our Lord Jesus Christ is, as it were—and this is to me a very important thing—the Lord Jesus Christ is not squeezing our emotions into some small bottle of grace; but stretching and pulling our emotions in order to fulfill and transform our fallen and broken humanity.

If you make at least a quick survey of the Psalms—and I confess I’ve only done it quickly, you’ll notice a very remarkable thing which is actually perfectly in keeping with the principial teaching of the NT, and that is this: only about a third of the Psalter is addressed to God; another third of the Psalter is addressed to me; and another third of the Psalter is addressed to you. Now isn’t that interesting? Here in the midst often of rather foolish language that has not been tested by Scripture, we are sometimes urged to sing only those things that are directed towards God; and we cannot do that without saying that the Lord Jesus was singing some of the wrong things!

So we need to be very careful, for example, about some of us—you know we all belong to different ends and edges of the spectrum on this—some of us who rather despise songs that have a focus on myself. What is the key thing here? The key thing here is not the question of how many times the first person singular is mentioned, but where those many mentions of the first person singular are eventually going to lead. Are they going to lead me from the first person singular to the three Persons divine? Is it not legitimate for me to sing, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” so long as I am going to sing, “Hope thou in God, send your light forth and your truth, and let them be guides to me”?

It’s a marvelous incentive to sing, that you know that it’s Jesus who is leading your singing. [Hebrews 2:12] There’s also I think something that helps us to be calm in the midst of many of the controversies that presently arise about how we sing or what we sing. Because it so happens we know what Jesus enjoyed singing. There are 150 of them that He enjoyed singing—which incidentally is not on my part an argument for exclusive psalmody, although we ought to sing a lot more of them than we do. But doesn’t that teach you something in the midst of the worship wars?. . .

For example, by nature I come to some song that has only six lines in it, and I say, that’s not worthy—until I realize that my Lord Jesus Christ was prepared to sing the 117th Psalm [2 verses].

I get irritated when there is repetition. Now I don’t want to sing “Our God Reigns” 1,009 times any more than you do, but I can’t sing the Psalms with Jesus without knowing that there are lines I’m going to repeat again and again and again and again and again.

To a Christian community [in Ephesus] surrounded by ignorance and immorality; to a people who themselves were prone to the blindness and indulgence of their former way of life; at the conclusion of a passage warning against irrationality and sins of the flesh [Ephesians 4:17–5:18] —Paul urges singing and music making [5:18-20].

—Stephen R. Guthrie, “Singing, in the Body and in the Spirit,” Journal of the Evangelical Society 46/4 (December 2003), 638

Paul shares the same broad concerns [about singing] as Augustine and Calvin, but the recommendation emerging from those concerns is entirely different. To put it very crudely, Augustine says: “Irrationality is bad. Sensuality is bad. Therefore, be careful about music.” Paul on the other hand says, “Foolishness is bad. Sensuality is bad. Therefore, you had better sing.”

—Stephen R. Guthrie, “Singing, in the Body and in the Spirit,” Journal of the Evangelical Society 46/4 (December 2003), 638